This is one in a series of posts reviewing and looking at how some of the SEO companies which use bulk emails/spam with ‘we can help your terrible site’ type emails really can (and actually mostly can’t!) help your site.
Read some simple explanations of some of the SEO terms used on this post…
We’ve dealt with SEO Ground before, back in April 2021. Well, they’re still at it! This time it’s a bit different, as I never got them to ‘review’ my site, in fact, they ACCUSED ME OF BEING A SPAMMER!!!
The email came into the contact form on my big Christmas site from a ‘Richard Morris’ (I normally remove the last name of spammers for privacy reasons. However, I know this name is fake – so it’s all here!). ‘Richard’ was using a Gmail address which had his name in and also some random numbers… (Just like ‘David’ did back in April.)
The subject of the spam was “20 Days Free Affordable SEO and Web design Services” and the spam went:
Hello,
How are you? Hope you are fine.
I have been checking your website quite often. It has seen that the main keywords are still not in the top 10 positions in Google Search. You know things about working; I mean the procedure of working has changed a lot.
So I would like to have opportunity to work for you and this time we will bring the keywords to the top 10 spots with guaranteed period.
There is no wonder that it is possible now cause, I have found out that there are few things that need to be done for better performances (Some of them we will discuss in this email). Let me tell you some of them –
Title Tag Optimization
Meta Tag Optimization (Description, keyword and etc)
Heading Tags Optimization
Targeted keywords are not placed into tags
Alt / Image tags Optimization
Google Structured Data is missing
Custom 404 Page is missing
The Products are not following Structured markup data
Website Loading Speed Development (Both Mobile and Desktop )
Off –Page SEO work
Lots are pending……………..
You can see these are the things that need to be done properly to make the keywords others to get into the top 10 spots in Google Search & your sales Increase.
Sir/ Madam, please give us a chance to fix these errors and we will give you rank on these keywords.
Please let me know if you encounter any problems or if there is anything you need. If this email has reached you by mistake or if you do not wish to take advantage of this advertising opportunity, please accept my apology for any inconvenience caused and rest assured that you will not be contacted again.
Many thanks for your time and consideration,
Looking forward
Regards
Richard Morris
If you do not wish to receive this again, please reply with “unsubscribe” in the subject line.
Apart from the name, that email spam template is IDENTICAL to the one from April.
Anyway, me being me, I replied:
Hi Richard,
Wow that’s all very interesting! Please tell me more about what you think is wrong with the site and your company!
Thanks,
James
Within a few minutes I got this (just this) as a reply:
hmmmm
Yep, really, that was it! This got me thinking that I might be on their ‘naughty list’ (which I’m sure I am as we’ll see below) but I replied as a confused person…
Hi,
What does hmmmmm mean? Can you answer my questions please!
Thanks
There was no reply for five days, so I sent a little follow up:
Hi Richard,
Are you able to answer my questions?! Thanks.
Within a few minutes, I got this reply:
Again back spammer
Ooooh, now this is starting to get interesting. An SEO spammer has called me a spammer!
Now I could have got all snarky, but I followed the rule from the brilliant Atomic Shrimp on YouTube – reply to accusations like this with righteous indignation! (Seriously go and watch his channel, it’s a mix of scam baiting, food, geeky stuff and more.)
Sorry?
You emailed me, through my contact form, and said my site had lots of problems. I’ve simply asked why you think my site has these problems and what company you’re with.
How can I be a spammer? You contacted me!
Thanks
Two mins later, I got this:
Dont contact me again ..Your email come on Red colour
Seems that I was right. I’m on their ‘red list’! Also spammers don’t like it when you reply with correct information. Time for some more indignation!
But you emailed me first! I just replied to your email saying that my site had problems…
Please I want you to tell me why you think my site has issues. I need to see if that need fixing!
And time for a very grumpy reply from ‘Richard’:
DONT CONTACT ME FROM NOW
He’s not happy is he?! Oh dear… So I thought I’d ask about who he works for (I mean I know it’s SEO Ground – I’ve seen this name used on comment form spam for SEO Ground on other sites) but I can still ask…
OK. But if you hadn’t contacted me, I wouldn’t have contacted you…
Oh and you work for SEO Ground don’t you? You know, the SEO spammers.
Can you guess that his next reply wasn’t happy?
SPAMMING ME NOW ?
More righteous indignation time…
How can I be spamming you? YOU CONTACTED ME FIRST. I’m simply asking you questions about why you contacted me. That’s not spamming. That’s asking why you contacted me.
You say my site had a problem. I asked why. You won’t answer my questions. Why won’t you answer my questions? Who you do work for? Is it SEO Ground?
If you tell me who you work for, I promise I won’t email you again.
Well, I’ve not heard back after that one… Even with that carrot at the end, he didn’t reply. How. Sad.
I covered all the ‘wrong things’ from the spam template back in April, but here’s s quick reminder:
Title Tag Optimization
This is WRONG. All the title tags on my site are VERY optimised.
Meta Tag Optimization (Description, keyword and etc.)
This is WRONG. All the meta tags on my site are VERY optimised.
Heading Tags Optimization
This is WRONG. All the Heading tags on my site are VERY optimised.
Targeted keywords are not placed into tag
This is WRONG. They are.
Alt / Image tags Optimization
This is WRONG. All the images on my site have correct and relevant alt tags.
Google Structured Data is missing
This is WRONG and IRRELEVANT. 1. There’s no such thing as ‘Google Structured Data’. There’s special code called ‘schema’ which can help tell Google if you’ve got certain kinds of information on a site – but it IS NOT ‘Google Structured Data’. 2. My site doesn’t have anything that needs or is appropriate for schema – hence I don’t have any.
Custom 404 Page is missing
This is WRONG. There’s a 404 page. It’s here: https://www.whychristmas.com/404.shtml This takes about 5 seconds to find.
The Products are not following Structured markup data
WRONG and IRRELEVANT. I don’t see any products (which is very obvious if you’ve spend more than 2 minutes on the site). See Above.
Website Loading Speed Development (Both Mobile and Desktop)
This is WRONG. My site loads VERY VERY fast.
Off –Page SEO work
This is WRONG. By ‘Off-page SEO’, 99% of the time SEO spammers mean ‘backlinks’. My site has LOADS of backlinks.
So all those points are either WRONG and/or IRRELEVANT. But then, if you send the same copy and paste spam template to every site you spam, what do you expect…
Another ‘name’ used by the spammers at SEO Ground is ‘Roger Wilson’. Since July 2021, ‘Roger’ has spammed me SEVEN times. His first email used the same template as above, it also came by the contact form. He’s then spammed me directly to my email address on multiple occasions. I had a few email exchanges with Roger but they never went anywhere, but I did ask him (on multiple occasions) to never contact me again. But like his other colleagues at SEO Ground, he ignored that and the spam just keeps coming…
In David’s and Roger’s spam to my contact form, they put that they were from India. But Richard put that he was in the USA. There’s no address on their site (you know, that’s very trustworthy…) but there is a phone number in India. And guess what, Richard’s IP was from Kolkata. But that’s not surprising, as we know that SEO Ground are really located in Kolkata, India.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I have no issues with Indian based web companies; but I do have issues with any company that flat out lies (and uses fake names…)!
I won’t go into how terrible their site is, I didn’t that back in April. I’ll just say, it’s still as bad.
[Edit: TWO DAYS after I posted this, I got another identical spam through my contact form. This time it was from a ‘Johnathon Braya’ who put that he was from the UK. But can you guess where his IP is from?! Yep, Kolkata…]
[Edit: 20th Dec 21 – Nine days after my last edit… This morning, within the space of 20 minutes, I had TWO more identical spam, via my contact form – so done manually – this time from another David, but this time a ‘David Anderson’. And he put that he’s in India, so at least bit was true…!]
Conclusion
SEO Ground are happy to hide behind multiple generic/fake Gmail accounts to spam people.
Several ‘names’ from them use the copy & paste spam template which is complete and utter rubbish.
They clearly have my email on a ‘red list’ but ARE STILL MANUALLY SPAMMING MY CONTACT FORM.
So if SEO Ground say there’s something wrong with your site, I’d hit the delete button as quickly as possible.
But, as ever, the choice is yours…